Another pollster returns from the naughty corner today to chance its arm at voting intention, which now makes three if you count the erratically published Roy Morgan series (which I incline not to myself). That pollster is Essential Research, which has remained prodigious with attitudinal polling since the May 2019 federal election, and has maintained its monthly leadership ratings, while offering no clue as to its voting intention numbers beyond the inclusion of raw figures in reporting its sub-samples.
Unhappily for we salivating dogs in the psephoblogosphere, these figures will only be published on a quarterly basis. This appears to mean that every sixth or seventh fortnightly Essential Research release will provide the fortnightly voting intention results of the preceding period. This, the pollster says, will “mitigate the tendency to report on minor movements as some sort of political horse race”. This latest release confuses the issue by providing weekly numbers through June, but I believe this is an artefact of a temporary move to weekly polling to track reactions to COVID-19.
Essential will also make a point of not excluding the undecided from its headline results, arguing the conventional practice entails a “lack of nuance”, though no doubt rivals will accuse the pollster of hedging its bets. The pollster still follows the conventional practice of prodding the initially undecided with a follow-up that asks who they are leaning towards. A proportion of these persist in declining a response, but remain in the sample with responses included for the other survey questions.
The latest primary vote numbers show the Coalition on 38% (up one), Labor on 35% (up one), the Greens on 9% (down one), One Nation on 4% (steady) and others on 6% (steady). If the undecided were excluded, the results would be Coalition 41.3%, Labor 38.0%, Greens 9.8% and One Nation 4.3%, and 51-49 to Labor on two-party preferred (for the sake of consistency with other pollsters, it’s the latter figure that I will continue to use in my headlines). Compared with the 2019 election result, this leaves Labor up nearly five points but the Coalition hardly changed, with the slack taken up from smaller parties and independents.
Labor with 47% of the decided two-party vote (up one on a fortnight ago) to the Coalition’s 45% (steady), leaving an outstanding 8% potentially to be called on to fill the gap between the reported numbers and an actual result. The pollster’s two-party numbers look to be consistent with a 2019 election preferences allocation, although the report is not specific as to whether this method or respondent allocation was used. In his piece in The Guardian, Peter Lewis of Essential Research explains: “We will now be asking participants who vote for a minor party to indicate a preferred major party. Only when they do not provide a preference will we allocate based on previous flows.“
These results are obviously a lot better for Labor than what has come through from Newspoll and Morgan, and are clearly an established peculiarity of the series. Where headline results over the past two months have shown Labor matching or exceeding their primary vote at the election despite the inclusion of a 7% to 9% undecided component, the Coalition have been coming in two to four points lower. The Greens are reckoned to be about where they were and the election and One Nation a little higher, though the latter is complicated by their tendency to only run in selected seats.
Also featured in the latest poll:
• The federal government’s ratings for COVID-19 response are unchanged at 64% good and 16% poor, and the combined response for state governments has shifted only negligibly, with good and poor both up a point to 65% to 18% respectively.
• The small-sample results for individual state governments show the Victorian government up four points on both good and poor, to 53% and 30% respectively. This still leaves it with the weakest figures out of the mainland state governments, with the Western Australian government recovering its title of strongest performer (up five to 82%) from South Australia (down three to 76%).
• On JobKeeper and JobSeeker, 69% supported businesses being retested for eligibility, with 9% opposed; 66% supported continuing payments for six months, with 12% opposed; 54% supported reducing the amount of the payments, with 21% opposed; but only 29% supported excluding casual workers, with 40% opposed.
• Forty-three per cent rated themselves very concerned about COVID-19, up seven on a fortnight ago, with quite concerned down four to 44%, not that concerned down three to 9% and not at all concerned up one to 4%.
• Fifty-six per cent favour a “suppression strategy” and 44% an “elimination strategy”.
• Sixty-eight per cent support mandatory face masks. with 13% opposed; 19% believe them very effective, 46% quite effective, 20% not that effective and 5% not effective at all.
The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1058.
One new C.19 case recorded in Qld, reflecting Palaszczuk’s 64% approval rating albeit not reflected in the 2PP.
Good advice from Assoc Professor Ian Mackay of UQ:
How to get the best protection from a face mask:
1 Wash your hands with soap and water before you put on the mask and after removing your mask.
2 If your mask has ties, secure the upper ties first around our head.
Then pull the mask by the lower ties over your mouth and chin and secure it around the nape of your neck. If your mask has ear loops, then hold the mask from the ear loops while putting on or taking off.
3 When removing: start removing the mask from behind (do not touch the front of the mask)
4 Avoid touching your mask when using it and assume there could be virus on both sides of the mask.
If you do touch it, wash your hands immediately afterwards.
5 Wash your re-usable mask every time you remove it (60°C in the washing machine) or put the mask somewhere isolated until it can be washed.
6 Make sure you wear a clean mask each time you need to put one on.
https://theconversation.com/723-cases-is-a-bad-number-for-victoria-but-we-cant-freak-out-over-a-single-days-figure-143686
According to Morrison, there are “good” border closures and “bad” border closures.
No prizes for guessing which political parties are associated with which type.
BK….the state of play in SA and federally shows that it’s risky for Opposition parties to politicise the pandemic. Labor have been very prudent…and it’s working for them.
citizen @ #1053 Friday, July 31st, 2020 – 10:16 am
And which states have had the second outbreaks? The ones that have ‘discussed it with the Commonwealth’.
FalconWA @ #1046 Friday, July 31st, 2020 – 8:09 am
I think the whole challenge revolves around Clive’s ego and the dent it has been given when he was deemed not important enough to be given an exemption.
Personally I think the challenge is rubbish as trade has been maintained and it is largely targeted against discretionary travel on health grounds.
And the virus is quite polite and happy to wait while those discussions play out. 🙄
It was the hope at the last election, on behalf of Labor, to pick up a couple of extra seats here in WA…It did not happen for a variety of reasons, including the bucket load of money Palmer put in and the leaking of preferences from his sham outfit back to the Liberals.
Voters have short memories of course, and voters are able to discriminate between State and Federal issues, but just maybe this time, the poor harvest for Labor at the Federal level will improve.
Most in WA are red hot on this issue at the moment, and the worse its gets Over East the more hostile those in West will be to Palmer and his henchmen in this matter…………..Morrison and Porter…………
As somebody pointed out earlier, while business is not actually booming, people in the West are kind of living normal lives – and want to keep it that way……
The Liberal Opposition here is largely irrelevant…They might not be “wiped out” but I fancy another four years for them in the wilderness.
Also, interesting question, if WA loses the Palmer/Morrison case in the HC, will Tasmania and South Australia have to fling their borders open too?
Buce does well in uniting the left.
🙂
Clive Palmer will be held responsible for pretty much every death or hospitalisation in WA if the Federal Court rules against WA.
The same will go for Pauline Hanson in Qld although not to the same degree as the Qld action was dropped.
Tricot
Fed labor will need to pick up seats elsewhere to offset the seats lost in Victoria. Andrews is on the nose so would not be surprised if there are a couple of Fed seats lost at least.
Barney, I think when Nath mentions the quarantine stuff up, he is referring to Morrison closing our international borders and then letting in tens of thousand people in from heavily infected areas.
C@tmommasays:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 9:44 am
And fool consumed with blind hatred of Dan Andrews that you are
_______________
Totally incorrect. Before this pandemic you would be hard pressed to find one comment of mine even mildly critical of Andrews. I admit I am beyond frustrated. It’s not like I want the Liberals back in, but the utter stupidity of the Victorian quarantine system is destroying this state and causing sickness and death. I wish they had done things better but they didn’t. THey must pay.
Looking like 627 in Vic.
PeeBeesays:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 10:35 am
Barney, I think when Nath mentions the quarantine stuff up, he is referring to Morrison closing our international borders and then letting in tens of thousand people in from heavily infected areas.
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Shut up PeePee. You insignificant moron.
How should they pay Nath? And to what end.
Tricot says:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 10:19 am
“the leaking of preferences from his sham outfit back to the Liberals.”
William’s analysis on this very blog demonstrated that there was no electoral outcome from preference flows from UAP.
GoldenSmaug
If Clive wins Scrott’s crew will also cop a bucket of merde from this if covid 19 arrives post border opening . The Worst Australian newspaper has had plenty of headlines mentioning Morrison’s support of Clive.
C@tmomma:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 10:19 am
[‘Also, interesting question, if WA loses the Palmer/Morrison case in the HC, will Tasmania and South Australia have to fling their borders open too?’]
Most likely due to the fact that the reason for the closure of borders in other states & territories is basically the same as WA. The HC will have the opportunity to interpret s.92 in keeping with 21st-century conditions. My only concern is that the current HC bench is inclined to black letter law & there is little wriggle room in ‘…shall be absolutely free.’
poroti @ #1069 Friday, July 31st, 2020 – 8:40 am
Porter can pretty much kiss his seat goodbye as well.
Watching a replay of the ABC’s latest Foreign Correspondent program. The reporter, David Lipson, is doing a grand tour through Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
People being interviewed are in tears as they tell stories of Trump’s bravery, brilliance, strength, generosity, integrity and honesty. Guns and flags, accompanied by cheesy renditions of America and The Star Spangled Banner are de rigeur. Everybody is fat. The men are bald and angry, simmering on the razors edge of violence. The women are superficially calmer, self-assured, likening Trump to Jesus Reborn. There is no doubt in their minds.
It’s a world of crazy, yet it takes itself so seriously.
Griffsays:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 10:38 am
How should they pay Nath? And to what end.
____________________
Inject them with the Wuhan flu?
Chop em up like the Saudi’s do?
Feed em to the bears like the Chechens do?
I don’t know. It’s too depressing to think about.
PeeBee @ #1061 Friday, July 31st, 2020 – 8:35 am
Yeah, so!
That’s why you have quarantine, so people can still travel if they must.
The LNP are desperate.
Their ideology is falling apart on the economic front and they know it.
Morrison attempted to use National Cabinet to take credit for the good but blame the states for the bad.
Interestingly the Canberra Press Gallery pointed this out.
Now aged care and years of neglect is being highlighted.
The virus is ruthless in exposing the weakness wrought on our social structures by the erosion of governments ability to govern. 40 years of Reagan Thatcherism chickens coming home to roost.
All that small government mantra has left government under resourced and playing catch up.
Funding cuts have consequences. Life and death ones.
Buce:’There was no mention of permission of any sort. They just wanted to use it as a tactic against the government.’
You assume there was no permission, then state that as fact.
You did get the tactic was against the government right. And why shouldn’t they highlight the inhumanity of the government.
Most people with a heart can see what the government is doing is evil.
This hardcore tactic may appeal to you as you don’t mind a bit of collateral damage, even it damages young and vunerable people, but not all people are like you. Everyone should be informed of what is being done by their representatives so they can make their own minds up as to whether they want those representatives to continue at the next election.
Barney, in LNP land, it is so.
I have no idea what the HCoA will rule on s92. My brief reading on the subject is that most of the significant case law is related to trade and commercial issues- not the movement of people. I suspect if they do rule that people can’t be restricted from moving across the borders, which “free intercourse” appears to mean in the section, that doesn’t stop the State maintaining the requirements for quarantine including self-funded quarantine.
At the moment it is a long way off from getting a decision. I’m surprised it wasn’t expedited given the circumstances.
PeeBee says:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 10:44 am
Why do you support Tamil Tigers? They are the equivalent of the Khmer Rouge.
PeeBee @ #1074 Friday, July 31st, 2020 – 8:44 am
Yep, don’t want to create precedent.
The ones really deserving of our sympathy are all those families struggling to cope without their au pairs.
The HC wanted to address the matter quickly but cannot do so in the absence of some facts being proven which is why the matter has been remitted to the Federal Court.
Palmer need an adjournment to sort out some of his expert evidence
PeeBeesays:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 10:35 am
Barney, I think when Nath mentions the quarantine stuff up, he is referring to Morrison closing our international borders and then letting in tens of thousand people in from heavily infected areas.
______________
Actually you do inadvertently raise an important issue. Why were the Commonwealth and State governments so ready with Billions for an economic response and yet so stupid when it came to actually preventing the virus entering the country in the first place. The Premiers could have easily said they would not be responsible for quarantine, forcing the Commonwealth to come up with some system on their own. If the quarantine processes were as well thought out and responsive as the economic initiatives then we would be clear of this thing by now.
Thanks to Labor Australia avoided the Great Recession
This cannot be avoided. Even if we did not have Frydenberg waxing lyrical over Thatcher and Reagan.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/five-years-of-growth-wiped-out-us-economy-suffers-biggest-hit-since-great-depression-20200731-p55h5c.html
The virus has made recession inevitable. Without a high spending high borrowing response we will have recession.
Eventually to pay for it we will tax companies. This will happen when we next need to contain inflation
In a time of many disturbing happenings in the USA, this has to be up there with the most craven derelictions of duty imaginable…. Why doesn’t the USA have a national testing stretch? They had one…and then..worth reading the whole article.
“But the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.
Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.
On April 27, Trump stepped to a podium in the Rose Garden, flanked by members of his coronavirus task force and leaders of America’s big commercial testing laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and finally announced a testing plan: It bore almost no resemblance to the one that had been forged in late March, and shifted the problem of diagnostic testing almost entirely to individual states.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air#intcid=recommendations_vf-trending-legacy_82abafb3-83c5-494c-ada2-9219a52146ff_popular4-1
Nath,
How would Victoria and the whole nation look if the Libs were running Victoria?
Imagine Tim Smith getting his way? We would be looking like the UK (or the USA)…
Action nationwide in March only started taking the virus seriously when Dan Andrews went to Scott Morrison and said that we needed to take action nationally and everywhere went in to lockdown. No other premier took such immediate action to halt the initial spread of the disease. His actions saved thousands and probably saved more businesses across the nation than any other elected leaders.
Sure we have hit a bump in the road, but it hasn’t been through the deliberate actions of Andrews that we have got into the state of affairs that we see ourselves in. Mistakes will always be made as most of the responses and actions are a matter of “Making Stuff up as you go.” There is no standard one size fits all playbook for one to follow in a game that is very complex with an invisible enemy.
Victoria is also not alone with having to deal with a second wave. Spain is starting to lockdown again as are many places in Europe, South Korea is having a second wave. Any place that hasn’t eliminated the virus is at significant risk of this happening again and again.
Andrews has been consistent with his messaging and strong on the appropriate level of caution required (he wanted to open things slowly and assess the impacts), it’s why we are “only” in the hundreds of cases not thousands.
To spit hate against him personally is totally misguided, he is owning a failure that wasn’t his to begin with and his immediate actions have been to try to rectify the situation as quickly as possible. The alternative government in this state doesn’t bear thinking about.
Mavis
” The HC will have the opportunity to interpret s.92 in keeping with 21st-century conditions. My only concern is that the current HC bench is inclined to black letter law & there is little wriggle room in ‘…shall be absolutely free.’”
Cole v Whitfield was the HC of 1988 attempt to sort the mess of Sec 92 and the meaning of “absolutely free” Before this case the HC was dealing with a lawyers picnic. Since then there have been relatively few such cases. The test is that they are economic and the purpose is to place a burden on interstate trade to protect intrastate trade. Unless this HC wants to overrule a previous a previous HC decision and precedent and throw the whole issue of Sec 92 up in the air again I think they will use the test established in Cole v Whitfield.
As Barney said the WA government have not stopped interstate trade and it certainly hasn’t been to protect and benefit WA trade and commerce against interstate trade and commerce.
[C@tmomma says:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 10:19 am
Also, interesting question, if WA loses the Palmer/Morrison case in the HC, will Tasmania and South Australia have to fling their borders open too?]
Yep. And a lot of people in Tassie will not be happy. The people I have spoken with do not want the borders open (though probably those needing tourist dollars do). Interestingly, to me, is that most have no idea of the HC case that Palmer/Morrison are running and the impact it may have on Tassie
FalconWA says:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 11:03 am
Is the Palmer case about trade or about intercourse?
Mike Carlton Retweeted
NSW Health
@NSWHealth
·
10m
21 new cases of #COVID19 have been diagnosed in NSW between 8pm on 29 July and 8pm on 30 July.
=======
First time that NSw has been above 20 since April, but NSW still seems to be holding the line (or defying gravity?)
Not sure what ‘reclassified’ means, but it reduces the net total. Double counting? Normal flu / other illness?
627 new #COVID19Aus cases in Victoria (+579 total)
• 48 reclassified
The good justices of the High Court would be in no hurry to reach a verdict while the covid-19 drama is playing out. They would not want to be the blamed for allowing the virus to spread.
This is not an ‘urgent’ matter like determining the eligibility of people to serve in Parliament under s.44. There appears to be no hindrance to trade and commerce at the moment and the only person complaining seems to be Clive.
Alpha Zerosays:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 11:02 am
Nath,
To spit hate against him personally is totally misguided, he is owning a failure that wasn’t his to begin with and his immediate actions have been to try to rectify the situation as quickly as possible. The alternative government in this state doesn’t bear thinking about.
_______________________
Of course it was his failure. He must have known about the quarantine arrangements. We have seen in the press recently that from day one people in the Department of Health were calling the system a debacle.
From what I understand, Andrews initially wanted to follow the NSW system of using the Police and ADF to control quarantine. Apparently the Police refused and Andrews buckled and then turned to security companies.
nath,
If the quarantine processes were as well thought out and responsive as the economic initiatives then we would be clear of this thing by now.
Hahaha, the have the same amount of thought applied to them. It’s just the lags on COVID-19 infections are around 10 days; while the lags on shithouse economic policy is 6 months. We’ll start to see how well the economic response has gone from around September.
The biggest difference I see between Victoria and the other states is it is the only one where the opposition have continually undermined the premier. At a point in time, whilst the community numbers were low but from an unidentified source, Andrews was being cautious and not a day went by that he didn’t request people remain cautious. At the same time the state opposition and the federal,government were undermining his message, encouraging people to think of the economy, praising their suppression strategy. Now that it has all turned to shit, they want to blame Andrews and not acknowledge their own part in this.
If the Victorian opposition were in any way accountable and had any self awareness they would now run media ads acknowledging that they were overly optimistic and encouraging the people not being compliant to follow the rules. Unfortunately for both the Victorian people and Australians in general this will never happen.
nath
Apart from the States being traditionally reluctant to hand stuff over to the Feds they would have looked at the handling of the plague ships and Scrott’s warm feelings towards ‘herd immunity’ and thought ‘No thanks’ .
Assantdjsays:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 11:20 am
The biggest difference I see between Victoria and the other states is it is the only one where the opposition have continually undermined the premier. At a point in time, whilst the community numbers were low but from an unidentified source, Andrews was being cautious and not a day went by that he didn’t request people remain cautious.
_________________
Just yet more proof that on PB, the higher the cases for Victoria the better job Dan Andrews is doing. Pathetic.
Nath is being racist:
nath says:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 10:43 am
Griffsays:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 10:38 am
How should they pay Nath? And to what end.
____________________
Inject them with the Wuhan flu?
Chop em up like the Saudi’s do?
Feed em to the bears like the Chechens do?
I don’t know. It’s too depressing to think about.
Cat
“So, that’s the fault of the casualisation of the workforce; the stagnation in wages; the Privatisation of Public Services and the fact that those private companies inadequately train and equip staff to do the job they tender for.”
Both the quarantine and aged care cases, while caused by wrong behaviours from the individuals concerned, demonstrate that Australia now has an underclass of low-skilled foreign born workers, who are easily exploited and desperate for income to the extent that they will break laws. From their viewpoint they also have no social welfare rights so they feel they have no choice. They then also create wage pressures that lower wages for low-skilled Australian born workers, creating resentment among them.
Liberal party immigration and IR policies have both been chiefly to blame. They have also demonised refugees so it has nothing to do with helping the poor.
People are simply not taking this seriously.
Socrates at 11:26 am
A large +1
lizziesays:
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 11:29 am
It is simply unacceptable for you to have this virus and not be at home.
______________
Although, according to Andrews, you can be COVID infected and go down to the local park for some fresh air. Amazing but true!